Mike Watkins

“ Unless something about their current trajectory changes, Anthropic will be the most powerful monopoly ever created in human history.” - David Sacks asks if Anthropic is just Standard Oil with better PR? “We know that tech markets have a history of consolidating down and turning into either monopolies or duopolies. And if you just look at the revenue right now, there's only two companies making substantial revenue on AI. It's Anthropic and OpenAI. Anthropic is growing at an exponential 10X a year, and if they just do that for 18 more months, they'll be by far the most valuable company in human history, and they'll have unprecedented control over the most important technology of our time. So I don't know what you call that, but it is something to think about. And I guess I do have a thought experiment for you guys, which is, I just want you to think for a second about the case of John D. Rockefeller, who I think is known as probably the most successful, most ruthless monopolist in American history. But he wasn't very good at PR. He was terrible at PR. Everyone sort of recognized how ruthless he is. We've seen movies like There Will Be Blood, which is basically about him. In any event, imagine if John D. Rockefeller was way better at public relations, and instead of calling his company Standard Oil, he called it Safe Oil. Because, as we know, kerosene is dangerous. Their first big product was kerosene. And kerosene can light your house or it can burn it down. And in the wrong hands it can torch a city, or you can use it to make a bomb. So John D., let's say, should have called for the creation of a new government agency to regulate the safety of his product. And they could have done rigorous testing, licensing, common sense regulation. There would've been a very intense debate over safety standards. You know, what should the proper wick thickness be? And should we allow all those dangerous independent refiners, right? And I think people would have gotten so wrapped up in this debate over what constituted safe oil or safe kerosene that they would have missed what was really going on, which is that Rockefeller was building the richest, most powerful monopoly of all time. In fact, people might even have called Rockefeller an effective altruist, because of course, he was so concerned about the safety of his product.”

Bill Maher: “Oh, big week for Kings… A weird week for Kings because King Charles of England was here. Spoke to Congress. Got a standing ovation from the people who were—used to be at the ‘No Kings’ rallies.”